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12/19/2013

Hello hello!
I'm back again!
It's been a crazy month or so for me, moving to a new house, going through green card immigration process, holidays and so on and so on..

BUT! I'm back! And this time I'm back with MicroTouch One razor review.

I've got this razor probably two months ago and my husband started using it two months ago but I didn't have enough time to sit down a write a review.

I just want to say right now that I'm not paid to do this review and I've got this product for free.

So let start!

MicroTouch ONE razor

This is what company which makes this razor says about it:

MicroTouch ONE is the modern version of the timeless classic safety razor. After years of priceincreases from multi-blade razor manufacturers, MicroTouch, a consistent top-three groomingbrand in the country (Nielsen Report, Razor Trimmer Appliances, 52 weeks ending 2012), bringsyou the most affordable and effective razor option that professional Barbers still prefer today –the single blade shave.A substantial and precision-crafted tool, MicroTouch ONE is made of solid brass and chromeplated to a beautiful, polished shine. The ONE feels fabulous in your hand and, most important,glides smoothly across your skin for the best shave of your life. The ONE’s “butterfly” openingallows you to easily and safely clean the blade, rinsing it free of shaving cream and whiskers aftereach shave. Your blades last longer, and that saves you money.MicroTouch ONE comes complete with the razor, 12 blades, and a hard-shell travel case. At$19.99, it’s a steal. Learn more at: www.ONErazor.com

And it is a steal trust me!
My dearest husband was always using razor with those ridiculously expensive cartridges because those were the only ones which could last him for more than one shaving because he has really thick hair.
I asked him to try MicroTouch ONE razor even though I was skeptic because this is just single blade razor.
He was skeptic too and he was 100% sure he's gonna cut himself because blade doesn't have protection like standard razor blades have. But he gave it a chance.

And guess what?! He loves it now! He immediately stopped using razor from a well know brand that he was using before. He said that his skin reacts much better to MicroTouch ONE razor than on the other razors, he gets much cleaner shave with MicroTouch ONE, blade is much sharper than any other razor he used before, and last but not the least, blades for MicroTouch ONE razor are much less pricey than cartridges for his old razor.

Hubby shaving :D

To conclude this review. Paying $19.99 for MicroTouch ONE is a great investment, especially if you are shaving a lot and if you are going through a lot of razors or razor cartridges. This razor gives perfectly smooth shave, it is really safe for usage, it comes with instructions how to replace blades and how to take care of your razor as well how to shave in order to get the best results!

And even though this is a new razor it is still a version of a classic razor. I still remember my grandpa using this kind of razor and he never wanted to even try something else. My grandpa was shaving every single day and he never had any skin irritations and if you think about it blade is same here as in older versions of this razor. There is a difference in size from the old ones, this one is shorter and much lighter which is definitely a huge plus!

If you are interested in buying this razor you can find it at their page www.ONErazor.com for $19.99 plus shipping. There's also a cute video by Rick Harrison owner of PAWN Shop in Las Vegas :) And you can order blades through Amazon or Walgreens and price is around $5. For 100 blades. Hundred blades! Beat that!

All in all, very good razor, not too pricey and great long term investment. After all this would make great holiday stocking stuffer!

11/09/2013

Let's do another beauty post this week!I've got my second VoxBox from Influenster and it was full of beauty goodies.
I'm just gonna post photos today, and you can check my video reviews about Rimmel ScandalEyes Retro Glam mascara, that I fell in love with!
Later this week I'll be posting review about Kiss Nail Gradiation Polishes which are beautiful too.

All the products that you can see here I've got for free from Influenster to review and I'm not paid to do any of this. I just like doing it and I like sharing my honest opinion with other people! If you would like to know more about Influenster check this link. This is a link to my first post about Influenster!

8/30/2013

And I finally got my first VoxBox by Influenster! :)
At the first I was a little disappointed because it was so petite! Influenster usually sends full size products, but this time I've got couple of full size items and couple of sample size items.

But first thing first - about the Influenster! I'm just gonna copy paste description that is on their web page, so here we go:
"Influenster is a free -to-join community of invited trendsetters who
live to give opinions of products and experiences. Influenster creates
links between brands and members to reward participation and influence
future products.
An exclusive online community where tastemakers
and trendsetters (such as yourself) come to share the latest and
greatest news, places, products, and reviews with each other. 2. The
hotspot you just bookmarked on your web browser that turns your social
influence into sweet rewards.

Basically, Influenster is a place for culture junkies to come together and share their unique opinions of products and experiences.
Active members of Influenster get exclusive access to deals,
promotions, and swag from brands that thrive off the input (the good,
the bad, and the ugly -- they just want to know what's up)."

So that's what they say about themselves.

But what do you have to do to start getting products from Influenster? First of all you have to be invited to their community. Right now I have five invitations to send out, so if you would like to be one of invitees feel free to let me know!
After you get accepted in community you have to unlock different badges, go through different surveys so Influenster team can get general idea what are you interested in and which products would be good for you.
After a while you will get an email with pre-qualification survey, and if you pass the survey in week or so your box will be on it's way!
I applied for Influenster maybe a month and a half ago, and I got my first box today! They have different themes for their boxes, so there's Something Blue VoxBox which is designed for brides, then there's Paradise VoxBox etc.. I've got Good Life VoxBox which is designed for people with active lifestyle.

It is important to mention that you don't have to be a blogger to do this, if you are active on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram you are a perfect candidate for Influenster! To follow them on Twitter just click here and you can just search Influenster on Facebook.

8/20/2013

And I finally got my package from BzzAgent which consisted of mail-in rebate coupons for Concannon wines and cute magnetic picture frame. I already wrote about BzzAgent here. I really like this program because every once in a while I have a chance to try different products that I didn't even know that they exist.

Coupons, one for you and rest for your friends. Cute frame on right.

To be honest with you I was a little bit nervous to go to the store and buy Californian wine in the middle of Walla Walla Valley which is famous for it's wineries and great, but truly great wines.

But I decided to do it and went to one of the two stores who hold Concannon wines in Walla Walla and I was a bit disappointed because the only Concannon wine they had was 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon which is their cheaper wine, and I really don't remember when was the last time I had $10 wine. But, I didn't have a choice. So I decided to pick up other Cab Sauv within the same price range to make a blind tasting and to be able to compare it with the other similar wine.

And I have to admit that it wasn't as bad as I expected. Concannon Cab Sauv is really light red wine, it would be great for nice fruity sangria, because it has that nice fruity taste. We also tried it with some cheese and Food Should Taste Good chips that I also got from BzzAgent as a part of different campaign and we really liked it with it too. I decided to use the rest of the wine for my bolognese sauce and it worked out wonderfully!
If you are interested in buying this wine I would also suggest you to try it with some fish or seafood. Seafood and lemon risotto would taste great with this wine, as well as different chicken and vegetable dishes.

If you would like me to make any of the dishes I mentioned before and to do blog post about that please let me know and I love different challenges! :D

I ended up making moussaka with that bolognese sauce and it was really really good! Recipe some other time because I forgot to take the pictures during the cooking :D

To conclude, I would really like to try some other Concannon wine, especially their Petite Sirah because I'm a big fan of that variety! And even though I live in the middle of Pacific Northwest wine region I appreciate having something different every once in a while so I was really happy when I've got those coupons for Concannon wines from BzzAgent. I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised!

Here are the links for BzzAgent and for Concannon you have to be 21 to visit Concannon web page

8/17/2013

“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”
―Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

I was sooooo bored today!

I mean I love Walla Walla but Saturday evening in Walla Walla is not something particularly exciting.
So, I was sitting on my couch, watching Anna Karenina but today I simply didn't have enough patience for all of that drama. Don't get me wrong, I love the story and I respect it as one of the biggest masterpieces.

I'm not sure if I want to say that I am lucky because I was educated in Croatia, so Anna Karenina was one of the books which was on our mandatory literature list. Being 16 or 17 and trying to understand what Leo Tolstoy wanted to say was quite challenging. But I guess I'm glad that I can say that I read the book and that I'm thinking about re-reading it now when I'm a bit older.

Anyway, great book, very good movie but today I just wasn't in the mood for old aristocratic Russia, lack equality when it comes to women and men, unfortunate love, and so on and so on.

But couple of pieces of furniture that I saw in the movie reminded me of the chair that I re-did couple of days ago. It doesn't look like it just came from Russia but it's is Shabby Chic chair, and since France was mecca of fashion and style at that time, there you go, train of thought..

Here's finished chair. Scroll down for instructions!

And here it is! I'm so sorry because my pictures are such a low quality but I still don't have professional camera, so I have to do everything with my poor iPhone.

To paint this chair I used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint that I've got from my friend Sam couple months ago. Thank you Sam! :D She also gave me a chair and re-upholstered it.

These are the colors that I used:

Greek Blue, Old White, Dark Wax

If you don't know how to create this look you can order Annie Sloan's "Creating the French Look" book. I have it but I don't really use it because I always find my inspiration somewhere else. You can also visit Annie Sloan Pinterest site.
What I like about these paints is that you don't have to sand or use primer with them. You can just apply it directly on wood, plastic, stone, and so on.

Old, ugly, brown chair

So on the picture above there is a chair before I repainted it in Greek Blue, and then I realized that I don't like that chair in that color... It was too... Too blah...

Chair in Greek Blue

And then I decided to repaint it in Old White, but to leave parts which are "inside" the chair in blue. Unfortunately I don't have picture from that stage, since all of a sudden I decided to add some blue accents and to paint back side of front legs in Clark+Kensington Decadent Blue.
After the paint dried I used soft sand paper to distress some parts.

I still didn't like it after that so I grabbed Dark Soft Wax because I wanted chair to look like it was used before, and we all know how fast white gets dirty.Even though they suggest using Clear Soft Wax prior the Dark Wax I liked it this way better.

Here are the results:

Picture is a bit too bright to see details.

You can be messy!

And finally! That was the look that I was searching for.

What do you think? :) Big difference!

When trying to do something like this, just keep in mind the quote from the beginning of this post, and trust me, your life will be easier! :)

8/01/2013

I'm still trying to make a decision in which way this blog should go..
There's so many different things I would love to write about, but I have a feeling that my blog will be "all over the place", but not all over the place in the good way..

Anyway...

I promised you that I'll write a little bit about BzzAgent and Influenster. Since I've got my first BzzAgent box yesterday I'm going to write about them first.

This is what they say about them selves: "Connecting people and their favorite brands since 2001, BzzAgent is the
leading social marketing company. What's that mean to you? We put
products in the hands of hundreds of thousands of real consumers and
help them share their opinions about them with friends and family via
reviews, Facebook posts, photos and videos, blog posts and more."
So I decided to join them couple of weeks ago to see what is it all about and if I'm gonna like their program at all. And soon after I joined them I got my first campaign, it was for Kellogg's new hot K Nourish cereals.

Kellogg's BzzAgent Box

It seems like a lot of people like their new flavors and how convenient they are since they are packed in individual bowls that you can take with yourself. All you have to do to make them ready to eat is pour hot water over it and couple of minutes after they are ready!
But I wasn't that delighted with these cereals, they are way too sweet, and after you mix in the water and nuts and dried fruits they look like mushy oatmeal. I love oatmeal, but I eat traditional old-fashioned rolled oats, cooked in little bit of coconut milk, with some cinnamon and dried fruits.
Maybe I'm just used to that nice chewiness of traditional oats.
On the other side, for all of those who might happen to like these K nourish Hot Cereals, they contain 5g of fiber which is approx 19% of daily recommended intake and 8g of protein. I don't want to talk about sugar here. I want you to discover that by yourself.

Huh... It seems that I've got distracted for a second from my main topic for today's post... BzzAgent! If you have time to write reviews, do Facebook posts and Tweet, and if you like getting FREE stuff join BzzAgent!

BzzAgent review notes

This far I actually got two BzzAgent boxes, one with Kellogg's products and the other one with mail-in-rebate for Concannon wines because they are celebrating 50 years of America's first Petite Sirah.
To be honest I'm a little bit more excited about wine tasting than cereal tasting :D
$8 dollars coupon is pretty good deal, I still haven't tried their wines because I'm almost afraid that I'm gonna be crucified for buying Californian wine in Washington wine country. :D

Anyway, after you go through your boxes, after you try products (they usually send you flavors or varieties that are not yet on the market), you have to go back to their page, fill out couple of surveys, write couple reviews, and voila! That's it!

I believe that's it for this post... Short and sweet.

What should we do next time? Food? Crafts? Or gardening? What do you think? C'mon help me here! :)

7/23/2013

Huh... It's been ten days since my last post... I think I'm trying to figure out how to do this blog. How often to post, what to post, when to post... It's hard without having feedback from someone, so if you have any comments, suggestions, critiques or thoughts I would love to hear those!

Anyway, one of the things that I really love doing is making doughs. I don't use mixers or dough makers or pre-made dough mixes or food processors, I like doing everything from scratch and love to get my hands dirty. Maybe dirty is not the right word here, since there's nothing more beautiful than making silky, soft, elastic dough ball which will become delicious bread or pastry couple of hours later.

But today we are not making bread dough. I'm going to share with you simple pasta dough recipe. Important part about this recipe is that you can substitute 1/3 of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat four, to give pasta that nutty flavor, and to add some fibers to your diet.

Homemade pasta!

Pasta is probably my favorite food, and I'm always ready to fight with all of those who are saying that pasta is not good for you, that pasta is fattening, this and that. It is true that pasta is really high in carbs, but carbohydrates are essential for proper functioning of human body. What makes pasta fattening are different sauces, and of course that chicken alfredo will have much more calories than Mediterranean grilled chicken and zucchini pasta.

Other thing that I like about making pasta, it's always fun! Especially if you have good company, cold drink and good music playing on your stereo! :) But let's get serious now, here is yourpasta dough recipe: (courtesy of chef Antonio from Marcus Whitman Hotel)

3 1/2 to 4 cups all purpose flour (or substitute one cup of regular flour with one cup whole-wheat flour)

4 extra large eggs

1/2 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil (you can use regular oil as well)

1/2 teaspoon heavy cream or milk

salt and pepper to taste

Mound 3 1/2 cups of the flour in the center of large bowl of wooden cutting board. make a well in the middle of the flour, add the eggs and olive oil, salt and pepper. Using a fork, beat together the eggs and oil and begin to incorporate the flour, starting with the inner rim of the well. As you expand the well, keep pushing the flour up from the base of the mound to retain the well shape.

This is two eggs pasta dough

The dough will come together when a half of the flour is incorporated. At this point, start kneading the dough with both hands, using the palms of your hands, pushing the dough away from your body.
Once there is a cohesive mass, remove the dough form the board and scrape up and discard any leftover bits (I kinda skipped that part last time when I was making a dough, as you can see in the picture :D ).

Lightly re-flour the board and continue kneading for 6 more minutes. The dough should be elastic and a little sticky.
Wrap the dough in plastic and allow to rest for 30 minutes at room temperature.

Beautiful pasta sheet, on the right of course :D

After this you can roll your dough with pasta machine, you can make spaghetti, tortellini, lasagne whatever you want. We made some fettuccine and goat cheese and morel mushroom tortellini which were absolutely delicious.

Making tortellini

This recipe is gonna make a lot of pasta. A LOT of pasta. So you can just divide it in smaller portions, flour baking sheet or cutting board and put your pasta on that (check one of the pictures above, you can see baking sheet in a background with pasta on it), put it in a freezer for an hour and then after pasta is frozen transfer your it in zip-lock bags.
Keep in mind that fresh pasta needs much less time to cook, so check here how to cook fresh pasta.

7/12/2013

One of the things that I enjoy doing is gardening. It's so relaxing. Every time when I'm doing something in my garden I have a feeling like I'm attending a stress relieve session, with all dragonflies, damselflies, lady bugs and the rest of my shrinks...

Pretty dragonfly in my garden

And gardening is really good for anger management too. You just take your mattock and go to your garden to kill a living soul in all of those nasty weeds that usually drive you crazy. And then there's that award that you get after your hard work, FRUITS and VEGETABLES! Even better ORGANIC fruits and vegetables!
I started my garden pretty late this year, since I just moved to Walla Walla from Croatia I didn't really know anything about our last frost, which plants can survive here, which cannot, so I spent days researching Internet and then I decided to give it a shot and just transplant everything outside. I forgot to mention that I started everything from seed, and I think it not even worth mentioning that my bedroom after a month looked like a jungle! Everything was growing like craaazyyy! Apparently I have a green thumb. :D

Me and my ONIONS! Pumpkins! Tomatoes!

During my research I found some pretty useful articles and blogs, about how to have the healthiest and biggest plants. I followed some of them, some of them I didn't so I ended up with petite garlic because I planted it in May, instead of September or November, but it's still delicious. I found really useful info at this blog The Art of Doing Stuff this link will take you directly to the instructions. Other web page that really helped me a lot, what you can see from pictures is Grow Better Veggies they have a ton of useful information, and I followed their instructions how to successfully plant tomatoes. I skipped fish heads part -yuuuu :/ because my dogs would probably go crazy if they could smell that in the back yard. Anyway, my tomatoes are huge right now, and full of flowers, which means that those instructions and suggestions are really working! Here's a picture of my first beets and carrots, if you want me to post a recipe for roasted baby veggies salad, let me know! :)

Dinner! Roasted baby beets, carrots, onions!

The only thing that I'm worried about are my beans, they are just leaves and I never tried to grow beans so I have no idea how are they supposed to look like.
And then the other thing I'm worried about are my nails, how superficial, but I love having pretty nails!

7/10/2013

I love to cook. I mean, I LOVE to cook. I love to cook that much that I actually applied for Croatian MasterChef show two years ago. And it was fun. It was so much fun!
Anyway, just couple of days ago I found this pretty simple recipe on this cute blog called Baked by Rachel, the recipe is for puff pastry bread sticks, if you can call them bread sticks since they are made of puff pastry, and cheddar and bacon. I've had some delicious tomatoes in my fridge so I decided to do a twist with my puff pastry sticks.
I've chopped up finely some fresh basil, mixed it with little bit of olive oil, freshly ground black pepper, and garlic powder. Then I rolled out my puff pastry, but not too thin because I wanted my sticks to be short and chubby, took the basil paste I made and spread it on one half of the pastry. After that I sprinkled pastry with Parmesan cheese and garlic Gouda. Then I covered that part of pastry with the other half, cut it in strips, twisted, sprinkled with bit more Parmesan and black pepper, baked for 10 minutes or so at the 440 degrees, and voila!
Couldn't wait for them to get cold so I burned my tongue.
Now you are probably asking yourself, what tomatoes had to do with everything.
Well that was my dinner! Little pretty tomato, mozzarella, kalamata olives salad, with some sweet aceto balsamico and Italian olive oil.
I'm a Mediterranean woman at the very end.
And here is a blurry picture of my puff pastry sticks

7/09/2013

And here we are again.
This is my second attempt in making and maintaining successful blog. I decided to start a new one because my old one was in Croatian and since I just moved back to States from Croatia I realized that it's probably better idea to start writing and publishing in English.
So I am Croat which means that I'm from Croatia and I hope that you will forgive me all of my grammar and spelling mistakes.
I decided to do blog again because I would love to share with you my favorite things, thoughts, recipes, reviews and everyday challenges.
Just recently I became a member of two great web communities Influenster and BzzAgent and both of these are social marketing companies. I will probably talk a bit more about them in my future posts. Why is this important? Because in next couple of months of weeks I'll be getting boxes with different products from them in order to do reviews. I love writing reviews! Don't know why I just love it. My first box is actually on its way and it's coming from BzzAgent, therefore in couple of weeks I'm gonna do a review about Special K Nourish™ - a new kind of hot cereal with a unique multi-grain blend" by Kellogg's, cannot wait for my package to show up!